02/01/06 - Nador > Er Rachidia - 314 km - 672 km

On 2d January Russian KAMAZ team piloted by Vladimir Tchaguine showed the third victory in a row at “Lisbon-Dakar 2006” rally-raid. At 314 km length route he left the Italian “IVECO” of Massimo Biazon 7 min 6 sec and the Hollander Hans Stacey on MAN truck who was the third in category at this stage 9 min 37 sec behind. Firdaus Kabirov finished the fourth, 14 min 5 sec behind the leader. KAMAZ ¹ 514 team piloted by Sergey Reshetnikov was on the 8 th position. Three racing KAMAZ trucks had to battle against a large armada of the most famous world vehicle brands: 21 MAN, 20 Mercedes, 9 RENAULT, 5 IVECO, 4 TATRA. Among their pilots were a six-time Dakar winner the Czech Carel Lopraise on TATRA, Dakar Gold winners – the Austrian Peter Reif on MAN, the Italian Jacomo Wismara on Mercedes; dozens of winners in different times.

At this stage it seemed that Tchaguine’s KAMAZ was pulling all the ten and a half of trucks on a tough coupling, so close were leaders to each other. From start to finish. After not very successful results at European tour now Firdaus Kabirov was catching rally leaders. In spite difficulties from both road and racers he demonstrated the fourth time and passed from the 32 nd to the 8 th position upon overall ranking. “We start, in front of us there is a large number of vehicles – trucks and cars, - told Kabirov, - we passed the first ten vehicles very quickly. It was harder with the second one. But we managed to overtake them. And only when we rest on jeeps, the race turns almost into a mess.” Sergey Reshetnikov demonstrated driving acrobatics and moved from the 49 th to the 24 th place.

The route was new and unfamiliar to the participants and was noticeably complicated than it had been before. At this way one should be attentive not to make considerable mistakes in the navigation. That is why the work carried out yesterday by KAMAZ crew was exemplary: our racers were leading from the beginning till the end of the route passing all checkpoints. Within the first two stages advantage of KAMAZ 508 over Massimo Biazon (“IVECO”, ¹ 512), Andre de Azevedo (“Tatra”, ¹ 513) and Hans Stacey (“MAN”, ¹ 524) estimated in seconds. But at the 3d, the most difficult part, KAMAZ crew was significantly ahead.

The rally debutants consisting of Sergey Reshetnikov, Stanislav Konopko and Eduard Nikolaev had visibly caught up with the rest being 28 min 10 sec behind Tchaguine and received the 8 th place at this stage.

Tuesday, 03 January 2006